Of the 29 shots that comprise Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s new exhibition of photography by the internationally renowned Michael Eastman, visitors will notice two things:
1. They are stunning. 2. They are stunning. That’s because the photos are both beautiful and big — 7 and half feet tall, to be exact, said Alison Amick, curator of “Faded Elegance: Photographs of Havana,” which opens Thursday and runs through New Year’s Eve.
“The reproductions are beautiful, but once you see them in person, it just takes them even to a new level in terms of how they look,” Amick said. “The fact that Eastman works in large format was very appealing to us, because we haven’t shown large-format photography. It really captures the locations in a completely different way than if they’d been smaller.”
Taken over the course of a decade, the photos are rich in detail, capturing the crumbling walls and worn paint of empty Havana interiors.
“They are very haunting. He’s described them as ‘portraits without anyone in the room,’ and I think that’s accurate,” Amick said. “There’s a real sense of a deeply personal narrative to each of the works.”
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2011.